Since this is the fourth time they have thanked him, it is reasonable to assume that he can do little. But since they hired him four times, it looks like he can do enough. Unless the so-called club management doesn't know how to evaluate an employee, or doesn't know what they want themselves.

Basically, presidents and football investors expect a miracle from the coach. But Legia is currently fighting for survival. There will be no miracle on the Vistula River. In the Polish league a guaranteed miracle is usually a bought miracle.

However, this time Vukovic was hired to plug a hole in the coaching job and that was what he was told at the start. He probably hoped to lift the team from its knees, but he may have been wrong. He will be followed by another coach, which does not mean a better one.

You cannot sulk

Coaches and players are judged by results, but these results are achieved by the team, and the coach tries to help. He usually tries very hard, but sometimes it works out better, sometimes not so well. It is important how much time he has. In Polish football, he has very little.

Replacements of club coaches often happen faster than the fans learn their names. And as we all know, tea doesn't get any sweeter with a spoon, which confirms the sporting level of the Polish Ekstraklasa, which is neither extra nor classy.

However, coaching " instants" like the one of Vuković happens for various reasons. Because the club or sports association needs time to choose the right man. Because the coach has no better proposals, so he accepts the offer.

Does this somehow demean or depreciate him? Not at all, quite the contrary. In this business, temporary situations are a kind of professional norm. Every trainer changes employers more than once. He takes different places in the ranks during his career.

He works at the club. He works with the national team, often starting as an assistant. He fights for position and recognition throughout his career. There is no chance of one job until retirement. He has to take every opportunity to prove himself. And good work pays off.

You can't sulk or go black when they take a man on as a replacement. What you can do is slog on like an ant, proving what you're worth. And Vuković is doing exactly that. Although he has some name and some position, he is trying like a trainee, so it remains to be seen how it will turn out.

No matter who, and for how long, hires a trainer, it gives them a positive reference. He confirms that he is needed and knows his job. In such circumstances, the coach has no reason to feel like a 'stopgap', because that doesn't mean he is inferior. It means that this is how this profession works.

One score, two marks

The categories of better and worse are not inappropriate or offensive terms in sport. They are the core and purpose of the game. The first athlete at the finish line is the best, the rest are inferior to him and there is nothing to dim or soften. And that is what I like most about sport.

This simple and clear hierarchy of values, based on agreed principles, in a specific area of activity. Today, it probably functions only in sport, because in everyday life it has long since been distorted and depraved, although it was supposed to be a model of virtues.

It is not a case of daddy's help. Party affiliations or friendships mean nothing. Beztalencie nigdy nie zostanie mistrzem. A conniving wanker - representing the country just because he knows someone who knows someone. Value must be proven by one's own efforts and results.

Of course, this is easier to do as a player than as a coach. I won't mention activists, because they are subject to a twisted hierarchy, where politics and money rule. On the other hand, a coach's results are easier to depreciate. It is easy to say that he lacks charisma or competence.

Although every trainer knows it, it is this labile nature of evaluation that can be the most frustrating in this profession. Apparently the score says it all, but only those who want it hear it. Those who don't want to will always complain because they know how to do it.

Every discipline is a closed milieu. People compete with each other on different levels. All it takes is for a coach to be labelled, say, conflicted. And such an opinion starts to work. He will be seen and judged through this filter.

The effects can be varied. For example, potential players will start to avoid him, so his professional colleagues will catch them. Or his players will leave him and his professional colleagues will benefit. These situations happen all the time in the sports world.

But even without the "kind help" of people from the milieu, the verification of the coaching job is based on fragile foundations and is almost always easy to undermine. The usual criterion for evaluation is the results of the players or the team. However, this indicator can sometimes be misleading.

It is difficult to balance the value of a coach who leads outstanding talent and one who has a group of mediocrities. Everyone is looking for young talent, but only some succeed. Although the mediocre ones improve their results, they never reach the level of the best ones.

It is impossible to compare the achievements of a national team coach with a club trainer. The former works with an elite of chosen ones, the latter on the available "material". He is happy when his pupils go up, but the road to the top is long, both for them and for him.

The performance of the players, their talents, characters, motivation or self-discipline can influence the assessment of a coach in two ways: the players are good because the coach is good. The coach is good because he has good players. It is a bit of a squaring of the circle.

The coach and the trainees are like one living organism that cannot be divided into pieces to determine which part played a bigger role - the leg or the head? The value of a player is described by a specific result. However, the merit of the coach is always an implicit value.

There is no scale to weigh it. There is no yardstick to measure it. And there is no other way to get used to it. The path is known and trodden by generations. You have to wait in the queue for history and it is worth being patient.

It's better to keep a low profile

Almost all coaches with well-known names and achievements went through a period of apprenticeship with their training patrons, usually older and with longer experience in the profession. Most of them, as they say, "came out as successful people".

A good example of this is the legendary " bricklayer's trio" of Polish football: Górski, Strejlau, Gmoch. The former was a leader, the latter two were assistants for special tasks. They were tenacious, they did their job and their successes were endorsed by Mr Kazio, as a coach should be.

When the term "Górski's Eagles" was uttered in public, they felt a certain discomfort, to put it mildly. Jacek Gmoch a little more, Andrzej Strejlau a little less, but history has not cast them out. Each eventually led the national team on his own account.

There is a day when an apprentice steps out of his master's shadow. It is only then that it becomes clear whether the independence of the craftsman wings him or overwhelms him. And this does not only depend on competence. Also on personal qualities and, in particular, on the strength of one's own power.

Michal Doležal was Stefan Horngacher's assistant before he became head coach of the Polish ski jumpers. We saw how it went last season. Mistakes in the preparations became apparent already at the beginning and nothing changed until the Olympics.

Apoloniusz Tajner is the president of the Polish Ski Association (PZN). Sport director - Adam Małysz. They both know ski jumping. They had to have an insight in the preparation process, because they are paid for it. Doležal could not fail to keep his superiors informed about what he is doing and why.

Nevertheless, the training part was screwed up and the coach played the role of scapegoat. Maybe he didn't have good ideas. Maybe he didn't have his own ideas. Maybe he didn't have the courage to stand up for himself. It doesn't matter what he didn't have. The important thing is that it was a mess...

Doležal took the blame, but only in one aspect. For expanding the team with lesser-known athletes in order to improve their sportsmanship. Apparently the best jumpers lost out, which is a vague explanation. But the blame was found, and I guess that was the point.

In a self-critical exultation, the Czech confessed frankly that he had learned a lot from his post at PZN. But probably not so much. He was rather convinced that it is better to keep a low profile. It is better to be the second than the first. That's probably why he came back to Horngacher as a new old assistant.

The staff of anonymous

Some coaches love to shine on their own. Others prefer to shine with a reflected light from a recognised authority. In the history of Polish sport we have had a discipline, in which coaches not only did not glitter, but they did not even shine with a reflected light.

I would like to point out right away that this took place in the depths of communist Poland, in the 1960s, when there were still inter-state matches in athletics. I would like to make young people aware that goals were not counted in the games, only points for places at the finish line.

In one such match the Poles brutally thrashed the Germans. The pissed off German press called the Polish squad the Wunderteam to spite their own. Again, let me suggest to the youngsters: click your mouse to find out what this Wunderteam was.

In any case, legends have grown up around that team of athletes. And one of them is the figure of Jan Mulak. He was supposed to be the creator of the Miracle Team. That is what was said at the time, and it remains so to this day. Only that it was and is an overinterpretation.

In fact, the obertrener has never trained anyone. Not even the long-distance runners, with whom he is most often associated. Zdzisław Krzyszkowiak, Jerzy Chromik, Kazimierz Zimny (stars of those times) were trained in the national team by Tadeusz Kępka.

But Kępka's name only appeared in the press when a journalist made a mistake. According to the standards of correctness of the time, all successes had to be attributed to Mulak. Maybe for political reasons, as a kind of compensation for his exile to sport?

Mulak was an activist of the pre-war Polish Socialist Party (PPS), and fought in the Warsaw Uprising. Shortly after the war, he began to be seen as a rival of Józef Cyrankiewicz (later prime minister). As a precaution, he was put on the political sidelines, in other words, to sport.

His biography is colourful and as complicated as our history. I will not dwell on it. But it is worth knowing that he was an extremely skilful organiser and held a protective umbrella over the Home Army (AK) men, of whom he had many in his training staff.

This was also one of the reasons why the names of the coaches so rarely appeared in the press at the time. And the success of the Wunderteam was the work of true giants of the professional thought. Many of them went on to make worldwide careers, training Olympic champions, but for other countries.

Names such as Zygmunt Zabierzowski, Zygmunt Szelest, Jerzy Hausleber, Włodzimierz Puzio, Antoni Morończyk, Sławomir Zieleniewski and Tadeusz Kępka can of course be found on the internet. But to the modern public they will remain as anonymous as they were during the Wundeream period.

Such a profession

The work of a coach can be thankless, even when his achievements are evident and his influence on the successes of his players proven over the years and the number of alumni at the highest sporting level. Czesław Cybulski is such a case.

Cybulski is a hammer throw coach. Two generations of champions have come from under his hand. Starting with Zdzisław Kwaśny, world vice-champion in 1983, and continuing through the whole spectrum of Polish sports stars in the 21st century.

Szymon Ziolkowski, Kamila Skolimowska, Anita Włodarczyk, Paweł Fajdek are the most prominent figures associated with coach Cybulski from the beginning of their careers. It was he who discovered their talents, formed them in sports and led them for years.

But at different times they all parted with him, looking for and finding new coaches. And then another new one. Cybulski is said to be conflicted. Perhaps, whatever that means. But if it wasn't for him, they probably wouldn't be who they have become.

Successive coaches, after all, did not work with them from scratch. And they did not start their careers, but continued them. Changes brought different results, but Cybulski's successors built on the foundations of his work. It is impossible to erase this coach from their sporting biographies.

And it is also impossible to find in this narrow circle any positive feedback towards Czesław Cybulski. Not even human gratitude, but at least approval of his role. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Why? Because that is how this profession looks like.

There are two options: either get over it or change profession. Most coaches choose the former. They fight for their cause just like the athletes. Only that the sportsmen do it on stage, and they do it behind the scenes. And they don't get a lot of applause for it.

– Marek Jóźwik

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

– Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski